OMG! OMG! OMG! We are close to releasing…. a beta.
After porting the daemon to Mono with Chris Szikszoy (Docky fame) and with the support of David Siegel and Alex Launi (both from Do Fame and more) the daemon is almost stable.
You can check out the code by running the following in a terminal: -
bzr branch lp:omg
The OMG! team has been working on a trophy set to release within the next 2 weeks.
WE ARE MISSING AN ACHIEVEMENT VIEWER !!!
So guys please if you feel like mocking up something throw designs at us here. Even better would be if you want to hack it with us. Since the OMG! daemon uses DBus you can hack the UI in any language you feel like. (Python, Mono, Vala, whatever…)
As a guest writer an OMG! Ubuntu! I got to to interview Ryan Paul from Ars Technica and Gwibber. I think its funny that I get to ask ask the questions he he hs t oanswer. But all in all it was a very nice interview.
If you are intereseted, read here.
Can someone tell me a joke where no one is offended. This means:
1) No sexist jokes
2) No religious jokes
3) No racial jokes
4) No jokes about vegetarian and non-vegetarian
5) No jokes about geeks
6) No jokes where geeks are superior to non-geeks
7) No jokes where closed source or proprietary software gets bashed. No jokes about animals (I don’t want PETA at my door)
9) Follow the pattern please…
Well I received a lot of comments and mails about my overall *sexy* desktop layout and look…
So to get everyone down a bit here is what you need to use and set up to have your desktop look like mine…
Get the Elementary wallpaper right here
Get Dockysudo add-apt-repository ppa:docky-core/ppa && sudo apt-get upgrade && sudo apt-get install dockyOnce done set your Docky settings window to look like this:
And last but not least the Icon Set, I use Faenza: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:tiheum/equinox && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install faenza-icon-theme
I modified the theme by changing the controls to Dust
The idea being OMG! is to have a central user awarding system where users collect trophies based on their activities and experience on the desktop environment. e.g:
For installing “Banshee” the user gets awarded with the “Banshee Discovery Trophy”.
For working with Cheese for 30 minutes the user gets awarded with “Photogenic Trophy”.
For Editing 100 documents using “gedit” the user gets awarded with “Badass Trophy”
OMG! Basics
OMG! is a little daemon. Applications communicate with it over DBus. As an awarding system awards users are awarded with trophies: A trophy consists of:
ID: String generated automatically from the Title + “-” + Application
Title: String with the title of the trophy
Description: String with a more detailed description of WHY the user got the trophy
Application: String with the path to the application executable
Timestamp: Integer with a Timestamp of when it was awarded.
Icon Path: String with the path to the Icon for the Trophy
Status: A boolean describing if the Trophy is awarded unlocked or is locked until the requirements are fulfilled
Priority: Integer from 0 – 2 describing how relevantly big the achievement is.
Applications are responsible for awarding their own trophies. OMG! is only a trophy collection and a notification system for that. It is intended to build another little Zeitgeist based application to monitor and evaluate activities to award users. Also achievements will be stored in Zeitgeist to show them in GAJ and allow applications to query their own awards.
Applications should have the possibility to register their trophies over DBus and not statically define them upfront
Applications know most about their activities thus they should hand out the awards and trace the activity of the user or allow Zeitgeist to track it for them
Awards will be logged by Zeitgeist to have a timeline option around “When did I achieve something”
I think it would be fun to add an achievement system to the Ubuntu Desktop, like is done on Steam and XBox.
The tricky part is tracking various events and finding amusing correlations. For example, if your screen-saver kicks in 40 times in a single 24 hour period, you could earn the “Alternating Current” achievement, indicating that you’re being repeatedly interrupted all day long
I decided to give it a go and I already have a very early prototype of what I call “OMG!” since it will be co-maintainer by “OMG! Ubuntu!“(trophy ideas) and “some Zeitgeist devs”(Core Application)
With Zeitgeist 0.5 being released along libzeitgeist 0.2.4 its time for integration with GNOME…
Taken from my post on OMG! Ubuntu! here is what is up… Please vote for your app by clicking the banner below
In other news:
Also Sezen as well as GAJ are around the corner with awesome new features such as extension and blacklists… (they are also quicker and sexier)
One of the things I enjoy about Elementary Project is that is has become a meeting point for designers, hackers and engineers. Here is a nice little mockup by “chawsum” to integrate Sezen into Docky
So at last Zeitgeist has its geolocation extension…. OH HAPPY DAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What does it do?
Nothing special. We use geoclue to add location of where an event occured in a new little table.
Why its awesome?
It allows you to ask Zeitgeist stuff like
“Get me the recent files I edited at university”
“Who do I contact most when I am at School?”
“Which pictures did I take in Brazil?”
“Where was I when an Email came in?”
“What files did I open during the conference?”
A little screenshot of “El Loco”
How is that useful?
With the ongoing trend of mobile computers and smartphones. People do a lot of stuff while they are not at home or at the office. So one always able to call, text, take photos or send/receive mails. The human brain associates these activities with when and where they happened. So this is just a little support for you memory.
The desktop or frontpage can adapt to your location. Example: When you are at home you call Family members and when you are at work you call coworkers. So when you are one of these locations your computer or phone can adapt to your environment by populating the contact list differently.
Whats next?
In terms or the extension me and Siegfried are still working on enriching the API and waiting for Mikkel to trash us on our shitty API. Markus is making it work on Maemo (Zeitgeist runs on Maemo) so we can start fiddling with the contact lists. Michal will have to write a C library for the extension. And Thorsten will extend the use cases and deployment ideas for this new awesome feature. Randy will implement it in GAJ.
More preparations for GUADEC.
But for now we have a little demo of the functionality in the form of a tiny little hack called “El Loco”.
No jokes about animals (I don’t want PETA at my door)
